Ontario colleges: The strike in the 24-college network has left many students in job-training programs fretting about their year

Apprenticeship students displaced by the strike at Ontario’s 24 community colleges are being assured their needs will be addressed, but, as the strike enters its second week, concrete details are scant.

More than half a million students remain out of class in the college network, including tens of thousands in seven Southwestern Ontario cities, with the game plan for clearing the backlog of apprenticeship training still not clear.

“Each apprentice and apprenticeship program is different and, as a result, accommodations or adjustments would be different for each apprentice,” Advanced Education Minister Deb Matthews of London said in an emailed statement.

“The ministry will to work with clients on a case by case basis to support their training needs.”

Jake Nakluski, a mechanic apprentice, says he wants more details than the province is providing.

“My apprenticeship is at a standstill,” said Nakluski, who was nearing the end of his first round of schooling at Fanshawe College in London when his instructors hit the picket line last Monday.

“I just want to know what happens with our schooling and no one can give an answer.”

Nakluski began his term Sept. 5 and was to finish Oct. 27. He’s taken time away from work to complete his mandatory classes and is collecting employment insurance to supplement his income while he’s in school.

The rigorous program, the first of three rounds of in-class work, has specific curriculum and timeline requirements, he said. And with every day he spends away from class, Nakluski and his classmates are worried the job action will cost them their term.

“No one’s really told us if we get to keep what schooling we’ve done this year or if we lose it,” he said.

But that’s a highly unlikely prospect, said Fanshawe’s dean of technology, Vertha Coligan.

“I cannot envision that as a possibility. I’ve never seen that,” she said.

Coligan said she’s seen two faculty strikes and one support staff job action since she started in the college system in 1986.

“I can tell you that we have not seen a situation in the college system in Ontario in which students lose what they have already put into their education,” she said.

“We find ways, through creative scheduling, through creative planning, to ensure that the time that has yet to be completed . . . we offer students a plan to complete those.”

Coligan said Fanshawe, which offers more than 40 apprenticeship programs and takes in 3,000 apprentices a year, is talking daily with the ministry and provincial heads of apprenticeship training to hash out a strategy for its students.

The apprenticeship action plan will depend on how long it takes both sides to reach an agreement, she said.

“We’re developing right now various approaches depending on the length of the strike,” said Coligan. “We will ensure that their education that was promised to them, and that we have an agreement with the ministry for the provision of, is appropriately completed.”

More than 12,000 instructors, counsellors and librarians walked off the job, after their union, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, and the College Employer Council — which bargains for the colleges — failed to reach a contract deal.

The union’s chief concern is job security and what it says is an increase in precarious work. It wants colleges to employ the same number of full-time faculty as the often lower-paid contract instructors.

With the strike entering its second week, and no new talks scheduled, anxiety is mounting for students, Morganna Sampson, president of the Fanshawe Student Union, said Sunday.

“In the first week, students aren’t really thinking that it’s real, but in the second week it starts to become crucial that some action be taken to resolve this issue,” she said. “Students want to get back to class.”

In Southwestern Ontario, the strike is affecting students at London-based Fanshawe, with satellite campuses in three other cities, at Lambton College in Sarnia and at Windsor-based St. Clair College, which has a campus in Chatham.